The disclosure relates generally to near-eye-display systems, and more specifically to waveguide displays with a small form factor, a large field of view, and a large eyebox.
Near-eye light field displays project images directly into a user's eye, encompassing both near-eye displays (NEDs) and electronic viewfinders. Conventional near-eye displays (NEDs) generally have a display element that generates image light that passes through one or more lenses before reaching the user's eyes. Additionally, NEDs in virtual reality systems and/or augmented reality systems have a design criteria to be compact and light weight, and to provide a two-dimensional expansion with a large eyebox and a wide field-of-view (FOV) for ease of use. In typical NEDs, the limit for the FOV is based on satisfying two physical conditions: (1) an occurrence of total internal reflection of image light coupled into a waveguide and (2) an existence of a first order diffraction caused by a diffraction grating element. Conventional methods used by the NEDs based on a diffraction grating rely on satisfying the above two physical conditions in order to achieve a large FOV (e.g. above 40 degrees) by using materials with a high refractive index, and thus, adds significantly heavy and expensive components to the NEDs. Furthermore, designing a conventional NED with two-dimensional expansion involving two different output grating elements that are spatially separated often result in a large form factor. Accordingly, it is very challenging to design NEDs using conventional methods to achieve a small form factor, a large FOV, and a large eyebox.